No Escape

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Everytime I close my eyes or fall asleep, the last moments of my fathers life flashes in the darkness, reminding me of the cold and empty stretch of space where they murdered him in the name of justice. Some call him a hero, and others call him a villain. To me, it never really mattered whether he was or not. He saved my life when everyone else thought I’d die. So in the end I guess you’d say it was my fault that the only person who ever loved or understood me was gone.

Often I laid in bed and wondered If he had lived, would he see me the same? I was no longer human. I was no longer the daughter he loved that held the brightest smile. The world he brought into existence with the use of the meteorite he found, left me in a place where saints turned to sinners. Or good little girls with nice smiles turned dark. He saved my life but he also damned it like the rest of those the scientists used the serum to experiment on.

Light flooded the room and I squinted and grunted in annoyance. It was the harsh daily reminder that tranquility never lasted long here.

"001, it is 7:00 a.m. Time to wake up." A robotic voice came from the speakers above, but I remained curled up beneath a thin white blanket that did little to nothing to stave off the cold from my metal bed. Sometimes I wanted to lay here and never get up, knowing they'd probably mark me off as defective and kill me as they did my father. But that'd mean his sacrifice was for nothing, and I don't think I'd be able to face him on the otherside. If there really was a otherside.

The mechanics in the walls turned and I watched as a small opening appeared in the door, spitting a silver trey out that held my meal.

Here, life was one big loop, a cycle that never ended. Everyday was the same. Wake up, brush my teeth, eat gruel for breakfast, and wait for the guards to retrieve me for my next match with the others.

I rolled over onto my side, ignoring the protesting of my aching and bruised muscles. The walls which erected from the floors of my cell were all the same shade of ivory, each corner leading on to another blank canvas that had no hope of ever seeing a drop of color. That would be too welcoming and the last thing the generous staff at the scientific lab wanted was to make any of their subjects feel at ease.

Staring blankly at the opposing wall before me, my vision danced—slightly glazed over and unfocused. How many years had I been outside the cryogenic sleep chamber? Fifteen? Twenty? It was hard to keep count sometimes, but I seemed to manage it well enough for a prisoner of the system.

They called me subject 001; a menance that caused the scientists around me to cringe whenever I opened my mouth to speak. It couldn't be helped, I lacked the patience to endure stupidity and some of the staff walking about oozed it like some kind of sick disease.

Surely the criteria for working in a lab with some of the most dangerous subjects in the entire world would warrant some form of a test; however, it seemed as though most of the people here lacked the only thing that truly mattered: common sense.

To compensate for the difference in intellect, doctors pumped more medication into our systems than cancer patients. 'To keep them docile and compliant,' they said. Well, to hell with that note.

I didn't have the patience to play domestic with a group of psychotic scientists trying to prove...what exactly? The files I had seen so far only showed bits and pieces of the overall plan, and at the moment I was attempting to piece together all the images I stored with the use of eidetic memory. My fathers serum created Metahumans. But in the wrong hands it had destroyed everything.

For years the human race slowly killed the environment. Mother Earth had enough and we finally pushed it to its breaking point when the moldavite serum started affecting the plant life, the animal kingdoms. Even us. Metahumans rose from the chaos. We were hated, we were loved, we were hunted. But something far more dangerous than us followed after. Creatures.

I remembered my mother loved telling me stories about the Bible, and my favorite had been the one about Asmorites. Once before God had punished mankind with a flood that wiped out everyone but those on the ark. And my father believed our punishment were the Asmorites my mother told me about.

God said, yet it was I who destroyed the Amorites before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and they were as strong as the oaks. They walked amongst the earth in those days, and what once was shall be again.

They came without warning. They left cities in ruins, and they even took my mother from me just as Prometheus, the people of this spaceship took my father.

That was three hundred and twenty years ago when the mutation of the serum left the last of the human race fleeing into space.

Because the earth died due to my fathers serum—which he had created to cure my illness—they thought it was only fair he died too.

I was only twelve when that happened, when they put me and everyone else in a cryogenic sleep chamber for three hundred years from 2022. When I awoke, my life had changed. Others' lives had changed. Especially the Metahumans.

I turned my head at the sound of the metal doors to my containment room opening.

"001." The man called out, brows knitted together as he awaited for me to respond.

My gaze flickered in the direction of two armed guards ready to take me out if necessary. The thought nearly made me chuckle. Clouds of white came from their mouths as though we were dead set in the middle of winter. In fact, everything within the room was covered with a sheen layer of frost.

I hated for it to be cold, but the only way to make sure they were safe was to keep my body temperature low.

Yesterday, I heard they wanted me to train against the other Metahumans again. I could only guess which other unfortunate soul I would have to face.

Rising from the single bed in one swift movement, I said nothing to the two blubbering flesh bags called mortals and only extended my arms out and remained passive. The trained men glimpsed at one another before clasping large shackles on each wrist, fifteen inches thick and humming from the electricity surging through the wires within them.

Once the other uniformed man stepped behind me, I counted down the seconds as though my life depended on it. If I were correct, one often turned the other way—out of sheer stupidity or relying too much on the ESP sedative the handcuffs pumped through them. Either or, just as they'd done every time, the man turned around and I charged.

I wrapped the chains to my cuffs around the man's neck before he could even release a yelp.

“Give me the keycard, and you, don't fucking move, slide your weapon over here or I'll snap his God damn neck and end you anyway.” I yelled, baring my teeth.

I had to do this.

Up here I wasn’t the little girl my father loved. I was 001. The monster they created. I have no mercy. I have no humanity left. They casted me from that status when I took the serum and came out changed, different.

The guards were used to my cold demeanor, but they still took caution when around me. I couldn't blame them for it either. I was the only one the medications didn't seem to completely work on, but only I held that information. As far as they knew, I was as helpless as a mouse. And even now they'd think the shackles were defective, not that I had an immunity.

But I hadn't expected the new equipment the guard had in his suit until electricity pulsed from him and into me. I curled inwards, releasing him.

“The hell you think that was going bastard!?” The guard spat, sending a well deserved punch at my side. I fell to the floor, wheezing. Before I could completely register the pain, they yanked me up and had me back onto my feet. At least I landed one blow on the asshole.

One guard stepped out while the other stayed behind me, all of us moving down the winding corridors in a strange formation. One in front and the other behind. Did they really think that would stop me should I have really wanted to take their lives?

I rolled my eyes at the thought. The only reason I wouldn't attack again was because the camera detected thermal activity. If they shot too high, a Metahuman was free and causing havoc with their destructive abilities. It would activativate the lasers which could slice through the thickest of metals. I didn't even want to imagine how I’d look after being toasted once those red beams zipped through me.

We rounded another corner and they pushed me into an elevator, more of a cage that descended in the lower portion of the spaceship.

"Another fucking fight?" I spat out. One of the guards just raised the barrel of an mk-9 submachine and placed it harshly against my throat to the point I couldn't even swallow if I wanted to.

"Get in there." The other armed male tore my shirt from my back, leaving me in a black sports bra and exposing pink wilted-up scars—rigged white along the rim. It covered a small portion of my lower back. Further up at the base of my neck was a barcode. My identification chip.

One of them let out a noise of disgust. "I'm not going to be able to eat for a while after seeing that." He scrunched up his nose and pressed a button, sealing me inside.

"No man. I heard she started a fire and burned an entire family to a crisp." The other commented as if he were telling some big secret the world didn't know of. Maybe not half the world, just those who snooped through the files Morgana kept.

I whipped around and gave them a stare that was colder than my purgatory of a room. They knew not the truth and I was damned if I was going to allow them to go around and slander me any further.

There were many things said that I had no control over, but now was different. I’d show them how to set one ablaze.

They weren't worth my time though, I needed to use my knowledge for the battle and not pathetic imbeciles working for a mad man destroying the rest of the human race in which he swore to protect. This was how it was. The dangers of staying here had increased. I knew that by the fact they hadn't given me a weapon or armor this time.

I took two steps into a rotation that left me facing a door that counted down. 002 and 007. I heard they would be in on this deadly experiment.

Dr. Morgana left out whether or not I was facing both of them at the same time. Just what the hell was this man planning now? A tag team?

Despite being left in the dark, I was ready to do whatever was necessary to live. There was no choice but to. It was kill or be killed, eat or starve. They made everyone into monsters. And I’d given everything up after realizing to hold onto hope was like clinging to death.

The elevator doors pulled open and Morgana, the man who ran the entire space station stood there with his hands clasped behind his back.

“You!” I clenched my teeth. “You killed my father. Then you took over his serum to make more Metahumans. You have us fighting like dogs. Killing each other, and for what?”

Dr. Morgana shook his head. “For what?” He laughed and I took a threatening step forward. It didn’t bother him though, we both knew with these shackles on my wrist I couldn’t do the kind of damage I wanted to. “I’m cleaning up your fathers mess. The earth was destroyed. There’s things down there that would swallow you whole. And you Metahumans are humanity's last hope.”

“Humanity’s last hope?” I gave a breathy laugh and shook my head. “How?” Deep down inside I could feel the waves of heat rippling from within me. Flames tumbled down my arms and fared, but I could feel the ESP sedative fighting to douse them.

“I’ve been training you all for a reason. To go home. We’re all going home.”